Defended Roofing Company From Customer’s Online Defamation Campaign

Roofers are in the service business. They use their skills and expertise to protect homes and businesses from damaging elements. Most customers would be grateful to have a new roof. 

Unfortunately, for one of our clients, this couldn’t have been further from the case. 

A homeowner hired our client, a Colorado roofing company, to replace their roof. The homeowner signed a contract agreeing to pay our client with insurance proceeds. However, the customer was unfamiliar with their insurance policy’s exclusions, and the insurance company refused to cover some of the project’s aspects.. 

This is where our client’s troubles began. 

In addition to the insurance issues, the customer demanded our client’s subcontractors deviate from the established roof installation protocol. The homeowner then complained about the deviation to the roofing company’s management, berating customer service representatives along the way. Our client began to suspect the customer was concocting problems to exploit them for steeply discounted services. 

To quell the homeowner’s complaints, our client offered the customer a free paint job on their garage. Unfortunately, the free paint job did not stop the customer’s scheme to cheat our client. The homeowner retaliated by withholding the final payment, falling back on an increasingly long list of made-up issues. The roofing company turned to Robinson & Henry for legal advisement. 

Our team counseled the roofing company about using a mechanic’s lien. When a customer refuses to settle their outstanding balance, Colorado law allows contractors to file this lien against the customer’s property. Since a homeowner may be unable to refinance or sell a property with a mechanic’s lien placed on it, they, more often than not, pay their contractor. If they don’t, the contractor can seek a court judgment to foreclose on the customer’s property to satisfy the debt. 

For many contractors, a mechanic’s lien is their only legal recourse. And Colorado law provides them a mere two to four months to file, depending on the status of the work’s completion. Our client needed to act quickly if they wanted to pursue a mechanic’s lien. Although often considered a last resort, we encouraged the roofing company to serve the homeowner with a Notice of Intent to Lien.

Unfortunately, the customer didn’t take the news well. They began an online war, purposely spreading misinformation about the roofing company to harm their professional reputation. 

During initial negotiations with the homeowner, our litigation attorneys reached a settlement that resulted in our client getting paid and the customer deleting the misleading claims. However, in a stunning move, the customer rejected the settlement offer and refused to pay their outstanding balance. Instead, they returned to posting scathing one-star reviews on heavily trafficked business rating websites. These reviews contained egregious falsehoods capable of causing significant reputational harm to our clients. In their bid not to be “silenced,” the homeowner didn’t account for the possibility of a defamation lawsuit against them.

Defamation cases can be difficult to prove because they require evidence of malicious intent. But our clients had a preponderance of evidence that would be admissible in a court of law. 

We sent the homeowner a demand to cease and desist, warning them that failing to remove the defamatory reviews would result in the swift accumulation of liability for each false claim on every platform they posted. Allowing the customer to remove the reviews saved our client from taking the case to court and financial losses due to online defamation.